Waiting
by reniRCx
Summary: Sherlock left a lot behind when he fell. See how Mycroft, John, Molly, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson cope, or don't cope, with his apparent death. Rated for some strong language.


**A/N: This sort of crept up on me. I've been wanting to write this since The Reichenbach Falls, but, you know, couldn't. Mourning, death, really sad. Enjoy. :,)**

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><p>Mycroft sighed and slowly placed the paper on the desk next to him, unable to reason away the sick feeling the cover article gave him. He glanced away and tried to ward off the thoughts that kept him up nights and plagued his daytime thoughts.<p>

It wasn't _if. _He refused to think _if. _Sherlock had definitely found a way. The question on his mind was _how. _

The thing was, Mycroft used to know Sherlock. Two years ago, maybe less, there was no chance in _hell _that Sherlock would have thrown himself off that building. He would have survived, no matter what it took. And Mycroft didn't doubt that the same was true today, but he had thrown himself off the building. Whatever he had done, Mycroft had realized, must have been at a risk to his own life. John had told him next to nothing, stating that "that goddamn phone call" was "none of Mycroft's fucking business" and Mycroft just didn't want to push him further. Maybe both he and John wanted answers, and maybe they were both afraid to go after them, but they needed to stay on good terms. Mycroft didn't know what he would have to think about without the bottomless resource on his brother that was John.

_Fraudulent detective. _If Sherlock valued anything, it had been his work, his intelligence, the respect that he received. That fuckwad Moriarty had dishonored him in the only way he could have.

Mycroft sat back in his chair and let the familiar, twisted scenery of his mind wash over him, as he searched for an answer to _how._

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><p>John researched.<p>

Sherlock's computer was completely wiped clean, with no indication that there had ever been files on it. John searched in every way he knew how- and he wasn't the most computer-savvy person around, but there was no one else who he trusted to try this. He looked through Sherlock's space, his things. He would have left clues, left some sort of explanation, some way for John to find him.

John encountered nothing. Not on the computer, not on the blog that he had kept up, not on the bookshelves, or in the refrigerator, or in his surprisingly sparse bedroom.

He tried the lab, searching thoroughly for anything, _anything, _despite Molly's insistence that she had already done so. Finally he let her pack it up and left.

Leaving Sherlock's things much as they were, John left 221B Baker Street. He found an apartment of his own, lonely, cramped, and just too empty without Sherlock and evidence of Sherlock. He started working at a clinic nearby, practicing medicine, making money, doing _something. _He met a girl. And another, and another, and another. They each reminded him of Giselle. Well, not Giselle exactly, he hadn't really been that attached to her, but of what she said.

She'd been right. They were all competing with Sherlock Holmes. And none of them could.

He visited the grave once a week, after a while only staying a moment, to look for Sherlock. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he couldn't stop believing that if –_when- _Sherlock came back, he would be here.

He never was. John still texted him, just in case, every day. It would have been several times a day, if he didn't keep erasing the things he typed into his phone before he got a chance to send them. There was never a response.

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><p>Molly didn't move Sherlock's things out of the lab for a long, long time.<p>

_You're never going to see me again, _he had said. She went over what he had asked her to do, over and over again.

She never understood. She wanted to believe that he was still alive. She wondered for weeks about what he had used her help for. And now, he was gone. Gone somewhere else, or just gone.

John showed up and had a look around- probably looking for catharsis or something, the poor dear. They had exchanged emails occasionally before, but without Sherlock, Molly never had anything to say. She worried about him, with how close he had been to the man, but could never think of the right words to offer comfort.

Greg showed up less than a week later, at her workplace in jeans and a sweatshirt. He had quit his job, he said, but he said it bitterly, making Molly suspect a lot of meddling and encouragement from superiors to do so.

He looked at Sherlock's things without the caution both John and Molly had employed, but looking for the same nonexistent answers. That evening they went out for drinks together, and the next day he came back, helped her clear out Sherlock's lab space and box up his things.

They kissed over a stack of boxes and wistful words; were living together within a month. The lab space was slowly taken over by meaningless tasks that Molly stayed as far away from as she could.

* * *

><p>Greg Lestrade ended at the same time as Sherlock did.<p>

He took all the blame. His superiors hadn't been the ones to allow Sherlock nearly unlimited access to crime scenes and delicate evidence, no, Greg had been the only one to leave the "fraud" in a room with dead bodies and no supervision. Sally Donovan testified against him, having been proved right.

In the end, Lestrade quit before an investigation got underway, destroying his career on his own than letting it be torn apart before his eyes. He got a job as a security guard for an urban school with nothing on his record to deny him that.

He visited Molly Hooper at work, just wanting to talk to her, under the guise of looking at Sherlock's things. Because it always led back to Sherlock, every bloody damn thing in his life.

It started with Sherlock, perhaps, but Greg Lestrade and Molly Hooper became something before his bewildered eyes. Sherlock was all but taboo between them as they entertained similar fantasies, but soon enough they became something separate from the fascinating man who had pushed into their lives and then disappeared.

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><p>Mrs. Hudson hated seeing 221B empty, but couldn't bear to fill it. When John left with one last hug and empty good wish, she let their things sit in the upstairs apartment for months, until her finances said that she needed to have a boarder.<p>

Sherlock's things were carefully boxed up (she tried to throw the worst away- that horrible skull!- but somehow ended up packing them even more carefully) and sent to a storage facility. She didn't dare do anything else with them.

She acquired a boarder, a pleasant but boring single young man, and waited for Sherlock while trying to convince herself that she wasn't.


End file.
